Intrexx Case Study: Research

"Above all, we especially like the ready-to-use templates in Intrexx. Many of the things we need, such as bulletin board, calendar and forum, are already included and can be easily adapted or used as is."

Frank Preiß, Portal Administrator

Bringing employees from 11 locations together

Industries: Education & Research

The Johann Heinrich von Thünen Institute is one of four Federal Research Institutes in the business division of the German Federal Ministry for Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection. With its application-oriented and practice-based research, it develops scientific principles which guide the federal government in making policy decisions.

The 15 specialized institutes and various service facilities of the Thünen Institute are spread out over 11 locations, which sometimes makes it complicated to communicate and pass along information. What they needed was a portal with a standard interface that would provide access to all of the information that had previously been processed using Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, static HTML pages, other decentralized software solutions, or paper forms.

The solution that the Thünen Institute chose was the Intrexx portal software, because it provides the desired options with its process manager and application designer. By now, the portal unites more than 140 applications for various user groups. An important central application is “Literature Ordering”, a necessary foundation for research. This is an ordering system for scientific literature, which contains a comprehensive workflow between the orderer and the processor. The orderer is informed as to the status of his/her order at all times. Once the literature that was ordered has been digitally delivered, the orderer can access it in the portal.

An integrated borrowing system for temporarily provided external literature also sends reminders to employees when borrowing deadlines have been exceeded. Other applications contain a sort of guide to the corporate design of the Thünen Institute with all of the necessary data; they also integrate external databases, or provide documents and forms for administration. A central event calendar provides information to their own employees and is also exported to show dates that concern the public on the Thünen Institute website. This makes everyone aware of what is happening at both their own location and at the other locations. That saves a lot of work and brings the employees from the 11 locations together.